[E194] This is Us: Unlock the Power of Rituals

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Empowered to Connect podcast, where we come together to discuss a healing centered approach to engagement and well being for ourselves, our families, and our communities. Welcome to the Empowered to Connect podcast. I'm Becca McKay here with Jesse Farris and Tona Ottinger to talk about the idea of rituals. If you're like, what is a ritual? Keep listening. But first, our last episode was on routines, and this is really a part two of that conversation. So if you are jumping in here, go back an episode, listen to our conversation about routines, and then we're going to pick it back up and layer on this concept of building rituals into your day, week, life, year, season, family history. So we're going to talk about that today. As we get into this, I have a question, which is, what is your favorite weekly family ritual? [00:01:03] Speaker B: That's a good question. [00:01:05] Speaker C: All right, I'm gonna immediately jump in. I have one and a half, though, so I'm gonna cheat. My favorite weekly ritual is ever since I can remember, since our girls were tiny, we have done Sunday night television and something easy for dinner. It used to be television and popcorn. The popcorn was served with chocolate milk. Then the popcorn was served with grape juice. Because Nick grew up having popcorn and grape juice together. Then one of our kids decided they hated popcorn. So it has morphed into charcuterie because now we're. [00:01:48] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Now you bougie. [00:01:51] Speaker C: Now I've got a bougie freshman in fifth grader. And so we have. [00:01:55] Speaker B: That's amazing. [00:01:57] Speaker C: With grape juice. That has endured and the show changed. It used to be Mister Rogers and it was Reading Rainbow. We did some Bluey. Now we are all enjoying an old ABC show called The Middle, which is funny and we like it, and it has many seasons. So that's the thing I'm enjoying. My half that I'm adding on top is that during the summer, our new high schooler has been. Nick has been showing the Marvel movies to our new high schooler and myself. We have never seen them. [00:02:31] Speaker A: Love it. [00:02:32] Speaker C: And so we started from the beginning, and every Friday night, we've been watching one of those- so many, many comic book movies in my history and future. [00:02:44] Speaker A: I love that. What about you, Tona? [00:02:46] Speaker B: I will say my favorite family ritual. And as we started some years ago- so my mom lives with us, and our lives are full and busy. And you would think that with Mimi being here, we would have a lot of time together. But we're all kind of running in our own different directions. So at least once, if not twice a week, Mo and myself and my mom, and it's always been about one or two of our kids come together, and we play cards or dominoes or rummy cube or, like, five crowns. So some sort of a rummy type or dominoes game. And there's the kiddo that doesn't enjoy playing is the one that often asks most if we're going to do it, because they have their own ritual of, like, sitting beside me and being part of it. They don't particularly like the game, but that, I mean, it's fun. And we play. This summer, we knew we were going to have more game nights, and so we started a score at the beginning, the last day of school, we played our first round of rummy cube, and we're adding everybody's score of rummy cube or five crowns. And the one kiddo that's enjoying playing with us right now gets to pick whatever we do that night. And the score just keeps building and building and building, and we're going to have, like, an all time summer winner. And so, anyway, I just would like to say at the time of this recording, I am currently in first place, of course. [00:04:09] Speaker C: The competitor in me is so excited for you. [00:04:13] Speaker B: We will. Sometimes we'll do it just when we eat dinner. If they're all going, dinner's ready, we grab our food, we sit down, we play a game, and it is. I need it. If I've been busy at work and my brain is exhausted, I'm just like, can we please just go play? So we use it a lot as a transition, even a little. Just, like, transition to what else we need to do that night. So that's mine. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Okay, so currently in our season, we'll talk about how rituals can change season by season. In my husband and I's current season, we grocery shop together every week. That is something that we both hate doing. And so we just turned it into, we're gonna go on a, this is gonna be our date night, and we're gonna make ourselves go. Like, we. We're gonna do a date night, and we have to grocery shop so that we make good choices throughout the week. And it's become a ritual of, like, we go on our date, we go grocery, we talk about the week ahead, we talk about what's going on. And because we're, like, driving to the grocery store together because of, like, the ritual of it, it's become kind of like a check in every week on, like, how we're doing, what we're looking forward to the next week. Maybe what we're dreading like, 'oh, I'm really stressed about such and such because, you know, we've got this on Tuesday, so we got to make something quick and easy for dinner that day.' So it's become like a way to kind of check in about the week ahead, which is funny because on its own, it's something that both of us hate. We don't want to do it. We would rather pay someone to deliver groceries to our house. But that feels silly because there doesn't feel like there's a real reason for that. So for this season, it's one of my favorite rituals. I anticipate that that will change in future seasons, but for now, that's what we're rolling with. Rituals can be this kind of ambiguous thing, and so I'm going to say a little bit about what it is. And then I actually think the best way for our listeners to get an idea is to pop popcorn daily, weekly and yearly rituals. So first, I'll give kind of the big picture. A ritual is a repeated, intentional moment of connection that's built into the day as part of a routine oftentimes. So really quick, can we just popcorn daily rituals that come to mind. Anybody can go. [00:06:27] Speaker C: The morning cup of coffee. [00:06:29] Speaker A: A nickname. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, I have so many nicknames, but I don't know that any of my children would want me to tell you those. [00:06:37] Speaker A: Oh, you don't have to say it. What is a ritual? [00:06:40] Speaker B: No, you're good for my kiddos. [00:06:43] Speaker C: So, yeah, I think that is the thing. [00:06:45] Speaker A: Just generic. A nickname is a ritual. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:06:48] Speaker A: What are other ones that pop to me? [00:06:50] Speaker B: I was like, you want to tell me? You want me to tell you? Okay. No one I can say is. And I probably. I think I've shared this on episodes previously. One of my kids, I wink at them. [00:07:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:02] Speaker B: And I shared it on a podcast episode or maybe teaching, cultivate connection or something one time. And Mo was like, 'you do what?' I was like, 'yeah. We wink at each other.' It's like he's my 20 year old. I still wink at him. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Yes. [00:07:14] Speaker B: And he still winks at me back. And I started when he was very little. What's that? [00:07:19] Speaker C: Mo didn't know? [00:07:20] Speaker B: He had no idea because I don't think it obvious. It's just between us. He glances at me, and I give him a little wink. When he walks in, he winks at me back. We've never said anything about it, but he had a lot of time in the hospital when he was little, and it was something that, like, if he was feeling anxious or doing. I probably would just give him a little wink. So it's. I just winked at y'all to show you how I wink at him. It's just quiet. It's between the two of us. I might do it three times a day. [00:07:44] Speaker C: Specifically only with you and that kid. [00:07:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:48] Speaker C: I've never winked it in my. It can be something everyone does. It could be something only you and someone else do. Yeah. [00:07:56] Speaker B: So we have a little wink. I think about that. Like the little handshakes or something, you know? So if there's a fun little way, you might scratch a kid's back, or maybe you walk in and you, like, give them a little, you know, back rub. Just like there's physical touch rituals that happen between you and a particular child based on that kind of physical connection you would have. [00:08:20] Speaker C: So that's an idea on the way. Right before we drop off at school, I am typically the person dropping off for school in the morning. And my girls and I have a morning mantra, so somebody leads it, and it gets longer and longer every year because people want to tack extra things onto it. But we have our morning mantra. [00:08:42] Speaker B: We have a little nighttime prayer for our two younger kids that I think is the same thing. I've been praying since they came home at age two for ten years. It's the same prayer, and they don't really want it to change. If I say it different, it's not the prayer, it's not the bedtime prayer. So every now and then, they might want me to pray for their Aoe or a test in the next day or something. But I still have to say the same thing the same way. So it's part of building on last episode their bedtime routine. But the way I say that little prayer is very much a ritual. They will call me if I'm out of town. 'Mom, can you say the prayer?' I'll say it over the phone because it's just. It's something I do with them. Mo tries. It's like, it's not the same. [00:09:29] Speaker A: That's right, because rituals are rhythm relationship. They're about the relationship between two people. So we've mentioned a bunch of daily rituals. A couple others to throw in the mix would be inside jokes. I come from a family of movie quoters. Growing up, there was certain movies that we quoted almost every day for certain things. Like, for certain, if we're trying to get out the door, the way that we would tell each other to hurry up would be a movie quote, or there would be an inside joke. As we were setting the table and we would jokingly forget to set someone's place or whatever the things are that are happening kind of on a daily basis. Two more categories. So let's try this again. Let's popcorn again. How we did weekly rituals. What could be a weekly ritual? I'll kick us off with just like, it could be as simple as movie night or pizza night. It could be as simple as on Wednesdays we have pizza. What are other weekly rituals that come. [00:10:21] Speaker B: To mind depending on the time of the year? If you have school aged kids, Friday night football games, like, that's something that we look forward to. In the fall, we go to the kids school football games. So that's a weekly ritual. [00:10:35] Speaker C: The one I shared for my favorite family ritual is a weekly ritual. But I would also say we go to church as a family on Sunday mornings, and that's a weekly ritual that we have. Back to school is its own, like, getting ready for the school week on Sunday night feels like kind of a weekly ritual. Like, and I would even say my husband and I have a weekly ritual of talking through the calendar together and like, you know, who's got what, who's taking which kid where, what's going happening, who's calling that person for that. [00:11:13] Speaker A: Love it. Anything else to add before we transition to the yearly rituals? Usually if it's tripping you up when we say yearly ritual, this is going to be your family traditions. So what kinds of family traditions pop to y'all's mind? Mine is a lot about the types of food we eat at certain holidays is a family tradition. What else? [00:11:35] Speaker C: Going shopping for back to school supplies. It's a ritual. Every time we go to certain doctors, my kids have specialists they see for various medical things, and we usually eat it at certain places. When we go see those certain doctors, you know, the GI specialist always warrants donuts. We are always donuts. After the GI doctor. [00:12:01] Speaker B: I think about birthdays and how we celebrate birthdays tends to be a ritual because there's maybe a rhythm or a way that you do that for each kiddo. So that's a ritual. Obviously, if you have faith, tradition, holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah or those sorts of things, those are going to be yearly rituals. The events, the activities, the things that you do. We do hallmark Christmas ornaments for the kids and that like, kicks off the holiday season and we always do it around Thanksgiving weekend. So like, that is something like we have our. Some of our kids have moved on and got off to college and we facetime them and buy them their ornament and send it to them or they have a significant other. We start including their significant other into some of those yearly rituals because, well, I don't want to skip. I'll let y'all keep popcorning. But I have a, like, essence of them. Yeah. [00:12:58] Speaker C: I feel like one of my rituals is getting on Instagram to see what ornaments your kids got for their. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Oh, I love that. That's awesome, Jesse, I love that ritual for your family. And we, we absorb that from my in laws. That was something they did growing up. So some of these rituals get to be passed down. They do become the sort of sense of being part of the family. [00:13:25] Speaker A: It's really, you said in the last episode, Jesse, it's the, this is us of us. Like, what makes us us? So the one that is making me laugh right now is at the Empowered to Connect offices around Thanksgiving. You get to feel the effects of family traditions because there is strong debates over when can we play Christmas music in the office. And people bring with them their yearly family traditions right up into the office. And spoiler alert, we do not all agree on the answer to that question. So there's this sense of, like, it becomes a little bit of who you are. Like, you carry some of these things with you and some of them can be silly. Like, when do you play Christmas music? And some of them can hold family value or your identity as you hear these things. We started the episode by saying we're building on our episode on routines. And sometimes it can get confusing. Is this a routine or a ritual? And Jesse has a great story to kind of illustrate this for us as we jump further into the conversation. [00:14:28] Speaker C: I'm even thinking about this in some of the examples I shared because you were like, routines are about relationship. And I'm like, well, my morning cup of coffee I listed as a ritual. And I still would hold that it's a ritual, but it's like a relationship with myself, which I think it counts, right? Yeah, but I have a relationship with God or something. You know, it's like part of, part of my morning routine. But here's the way I think about it. I was cooking some holiday meal once and needed some cognac. So I go to the liquor store and I walk in and they know that I clearly don't know what I'm doing. And they're like, what do you need? And I say, I need some cognac. And the guy hands me a bottle of brandy and I'm like, no, I need cognac. And he was like, all cognac is brandy. Not all brandy is cognac. And I've never. I didn't know this about Cognac, but I also thought it was an excellent illustration because we all have those things in life that, like, this is included in this, but also, not everything in the larger category is this smaller thing. And I think that's what rituals are. All rituals are routines, but not all routines are rituals. And I think what makes it like that would be, like, what makes it a ritual, guys, I've got my own ideas, but I'd love to know what you guys think. [00:15:56] Speaker B: So, in the last episode, we talked about how routines, and we talked about this a lot, build trust and felt safety and predictability. Okay. I think about a ritual as taking that same concept and adding onto it the relationship piece now. So it sends the message. So routines say, hey, I can trust this whole situation. This stitch, this family, these people, this parents, this adult. I have felt safety because I know what's coming. It's predictable. A ritual layers on. Ah, it's about you and I. It's about belonging. It's about connection. It's saying, I belong, we belong. So it's that little belonging piece that's like the magic of a ritual. That, you're right, is probably a routine because it happens repetitively over and over again. But without it, your routines don't have belonging and relationship and connection as the magic sauce of them. So, to put a fine point on that, the routine might be that I'm working in the kitchen and my 20 year old son walks in and we're around the kitchen counter preparing food, as we do all the time. The ritual is, I winked at him when he came in to that's mom and I's thing right there. I didn't have to wink and the routine would have gone off. But the ritual was the wink. Yeah. So that's how it feels to me. It's me saying, we are in this little thing right here together. This is us. If we want to kind of say that again, that's what it means to me. It means belonging and relationship. [00:17:51] Speaker C: I think I was thinking about another thing that I mentioned, which was my husband and I doing the rundown of the, of the calendar, which is a routine. That's a routine. We do that on, you know, Friday or Saturday, sometimes Sunday. That can be a routine. What makes it a ritual in my family is. Is the way that it's done, meaning that this was kind of born out of the way that we do this. Kind of like check in with each other was born out of this. This kind of need for me to know that I was not holding all the cards in our family, that I was not holding all of the mental load. And so, you know, during COVID and coming out of COVID and as I've increased my work hours at Empowered to Connect, it was like, guys, I need to know my family's got my back. Like, I need to know I'm not holding all of this alone. And so that check in with Nick is more than just running through a schedule. It's Nick and me choosing to hold those cards together. And that's what makes it a ritual to me. Do you hear what we're saying, guys? All rituals are routines, but not all routines are rituals. And it's the belonging, it's the togetherness. It's the part that makes you feel most you and most held, I guess that makes it the ritual. [00:19:20] Speaker A: And I love the collaborative nature of, like, what you're describing, like, Tona with your kiddo, the wink is something that you share together, Jesse with Nick. And, like, the way that you check in, like, that's something that's, like, very together. And I think we have a lot of say so over what kinds of rituals we want to bring forward from our own childhood. If we're with a partner, we get to talk and negotiate and compromise and find our way towards what's going to be the us things. And then with kids, like, we can. I like, I like the vision you casted to Jesse of, like, some rituals are with one kid and some are with the whole family, but you really get to work through that as relationships. And I just think that's really cool and beautiful because a lot of times we just. I mean, I'll use Christmas music as the silly example. You just walk in and you have, you know, if I say, when can you play Christmas music? Most of us have an answer. The answer is either before Thanksgiving, after Thanksgiving, or I don't care. Please stop talking to me. All three of those are answers. But we get to collect collaboratively, decide together what are the rituals we want to carry forward. I think it would be important here to talk about why rituals are important when you're building relationships with kids in your life. So I wonder what you got. What would come to mind for you guys on why are rituals so important? [00:20:41] Speaker B: They hold - I hate that I'm using the word predictability again, but that's the word that comes to mind. But there is a sense of we're in this thing together, that absent of those quiet serve and return to sort of use this relational dance kind of language between you and a kiddo, then that relationship might feel void of nurture and sort of the goodness. And I want to give an example that isn't exactly about kids, but I think the concept of it can help us find our way to applying this with kiddos. So as a staff team, for those listening, you may not know that we actually have a clinic in Memphis, Tennessee that we run that sees children and families every day of the week. And we've had some turnover with some of our staff team there as clinics do some change, and that's hard. We as a staff team are very close. We're very relational. Our times together as a staff are very precious to us. We are a relationally focused organization. So in the times when people are coming and going, it can feel unsettling. And we're navigating one of those times this summer, and we have a monthly 'all staff' meeting. So each one of our teams meets the once a month, but our whole Empowered to Connect staff, team, interns, everybody gets together once a month, and we were about to have one of those this month, and it was going to be the last time one of our staff was going to be with us. It's been with us a very long time and is a huge part of the ethos and DNA of our clinic. And I was looking forward to that staff meeting, and I was struggling trying to figure out how do I steward this and honor them in this moment, and, like, how do I make my way through this staff meeting? It's a time of change. And I pulled way back and went to a ritual that we do as a staff team. And we, our routine is we have monthly staff meeting every month, all staff. That's the routine. We do all kinds of things there, announcements, change updates, connecting experiences, all kinds of things, the schedule and agenda change. But I was trying to figure out how do we hold this moment of transition? And I pulled back to a ritual which as a TBRI trust based relational intervention organization, the fabric of some of the ethos of our staff is this thing called nurture groups. I don't have time today to explain what those are, but it's basically like a group counseling session, but there is an agenda and a way to do it that is highly relationally connected. I can't remember the last time as a staff team, we pulled together, broke up in groups, and literally did a nurture group, a TBRI nurture group from beginning to end. But that's the only thing I knew to do to navigate that staff meeting, because I knew it would provide the space for everyone to feel held and belong and remember that we're part of something bigger than this moment together. It was beautiful. It was exactly what we needed. But when I didn't know what to do, I pulled to a ritual. And that's the essence of what a ritual can do. It can help through the transition, it can help through the difficulty. It can hold the moment. It can sustain the relationship. It can help you bridge moments of change or difficulty or stress or transition in a relationally focused way. So help me think about what would be some ways that we could see that translate on to supporting kids. [00:24:51] Speaker C: I was thinking about this while you were sharing that, Tona. You were talking about serve and return. And that's really what a ritual is, is a bid for connection. We like to call, you know, we say that every now and then, that bid for connection, like, will you? It's like, are we good? Are we together? Do you like me? Do you love me? Do I matter to you? Those things that we inherently wonder and want to be affirmed whether we're a kid or a grown up. To me, a ritual affirms those things. Yeah, we're together. Yeah, we're good. And so whether you're doing that as a staff, going back to that ritual of a nurture group, to be like, together as a group, these many people of us, we're good. We're together. We've got this. We belong, each of us, or it's you and a kid, we're good. We're together. So I think what that translates to me is after a conflict of, you know, when there's been some repair, I'm almost always going to use a ritual with that kid. A little phrase we say to each other, a little, you know, if it's Tona's wink or what's that? What are the things I do with that kid that let them know that they are beloved to me, that we're together, that we're good? In times of uncertainty, if I know that kid is feeling anxious, you better believe I'm doing some rituals on the first morning of school, right? Like the little ones and the big ones, because my kid needs to know, hey, we're together. We're good. I'm with you. I'm for you. Those are two that I'm really, really thinking of. Or I guess maybe a third when my kid is maybe almost not okay. You know, you're teetering on the edge of dysregulation. I might use a ritual to kind of ground us in that moment. Like, you know, if I see. I think my teenager would be cool with me saying this. Usually I get permission first. You know, if she's. She's getting upset about something, and I look at her and I say, I love you. She, for some reason, loves it when I do that. And often it'll be enough to, like, bring her back. Like, bring the vault, the volume and the tone and the, you know, thermostat back down a little bit and, you know, maybe she's gonna roll her eyes at me or chuckle. And it's just, it's brought, it's brought it down a level. So sometimes I can use it to kind of transport us, but, you know, to bring it down a little bit. [00:27:37] Speaker A: I think, you know, for those of you listening that have lots of kids, or you're in a classroom with 30, or you're in a home with eight, or you're ahead listening to this and you're like, just processing it. I think it's easy to build rituals with kids that you like. It's work to find rituals with kids that are more challenging for you to connect with. So I think why they're so important is it gives that touch point. I'm gonna, as a, when I worked in schools, I'm gonna have a silly secret handshake with the kids that I enjoy being around just because it's gonna happen naturally. The kids that I'm having to support behaviorally, I'm going to need to find, what are the inside jokes, the playful things, the nicknames, the things we can do, or the calm down routines that work for them, the calm down rituals that help them. And so that's going to really give me a roadmap of how to reconnect after disruption. So I think whenever you're hearing these ideas, think about the kid in your life who you feel more disconnected from, and consider if maybe you need to try to find a ritual to add in. I can't tell you exactly what that looks like because I don't know your relationship with that kid, but if that kid is super into Pokemon, you might need to learn some Pokemon names. If that kid is super into skateboarding, you might need to learn the name of some tricks, and you might need to find those bridges of connection so that after a disconnection, because those are going to happen, disruptions are going to happen. What's your way back together? And then on the flip side of that, rituals. You know, something? A way that I like to think about them is it's the nickname that you give a kid when they're a baby, and then that's what you call them when you drop them off from kindergarten, and then that's what you're saying at their middle school graduation, and then that's when they're getting in the car to go off and do their first thing solo, whatever that is. That's the nickname. Like, it's these connecting points that keep you together through change. Like you said, Tona, through disruption, through adversity. Whether it's adversity between you or around you, it's just those little touch points. So I think that's a way to think about them. What else are you guys thinking about? As we talk about this idea of rituals. [00:29:55] Speaker C: I want to encourage you to think about play personalities as you're thinking about rituals. If you're thinking about, like, you know, maybe you're thinking about wanting to build more rituals with a group of people or with an individual, I would ask you to consider that. How do you play together? And if you haven't ever thought about that, we have other podcast episodes or we have a YouTube video that kind of talks a little bit more about play personalities and kind of that idea that we don't all play the same way, but that we all need to play, right? And we all play in some way. And those ways that you interact fearlessly and those ways that you interact in ways that are life giving. Life bringing to you like, that, to me, is where you're gonna find what. Where your rituals are, right. Like, you hear Tona talking about playing games, and, like, if they're keeping all score totals for the summer, then I'm gonna guess at least somebody is competitive in the Ottinger family, right? [00:31:02] Speaker B: That was 100% Mo's idea. [00:31:04] Speaker C: Love it. [00:31:05] Speaker B: And he's. He is the scorekeeper, and he's. [00:31:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I. I'm kind of a competitor myself, so I love cleaning. [00:31:12] Speaker A: We know. [00:31:14] Speaker B: Really, Jesse, you are. I did not know that. Yeah. [00:31:19] Speaker C: It was actually y'all that helped me figure out that I was a competitor I never really saw. It's because I'm not good at very many things. [00:31:26] Speaker A: That is not true, and I will not. [00:31:29] Speaker B: Now we got to stop deprecating my feeling. [00:31:31] Speaker A: Knows, my. [00:31:32] Speaker C: I. My family can, like, tease me about having to win or, like, they'll go big to match me. And it's, like, a funny thing. We love to watch tv and movies together, so we also quote movies like Becca was saying, like, if that's something y'all enjoy doing, it's. What's hilarious, is to watch my kids do that with each other on a show that Nick and I haven't watched. Our girls have so many, like, little quotes they'll say at dinner. They're just looking into each other's eyes and, like, going one quote after the other, and we're like, what is happening right now? How did this dinner derail into, like, trading quotes? I don't know, but, yeah, it's like, what are those things that you guys already connect doing? And I would say, look at your play personalities to kind of lead the way. [00:32:19] Speaker B: The goal, of course, is for their, like your kiddo, no matter how old they are, to see their preciousness reflected back in you through whatever that ritual is. So they, again, are feeling loved and special and seen and celebrated and cherished and known. Right. There's a sense of being known that happens in something that is between the two of you or the family of you. And it really harks back to, you know, we're going to launch our kids out. Most of us are going to launch them out. I mean, we do have some that will probably be in our home for the long haul, but those that we have launched, my hope and deepest desire in prayer is that those relationship rituals that have been laid down hold fast those relationships beyond them being in our home anymore. And so dig deep. Becca, I love you saying, it's going to come real natural for some, and it's going to be intentional labor of love for others. And it is a pursuit worthy of figuring it out. And don't. It doesn't have to be the same. It won't be the same. Their play personalities are different. Their relationship is different. Their humor is different. Their interests are different. Figure it out with them, and let maybe even somebody in your family be surprised that it's between the two of y'all. Like, my wink that nobody even knew I did until I said it out loud. Like, it's okay for them to be these secret little stolen interactions that are really important and valuable. And I know it's hard for us because we aren't telling you step by step exactly what to do, but when you feel delight in your child, when you do the thing, that's the thing. Yeah, the thing. And then do it some more. Yeah. [00:34:34] Speaker C: All it takes to make it a ritual is do it again. [00:34:36] Speaker B: Just do it again. Yeah, do it again. Do it again. [00:34:40] Speaker A: I love it, guys. Thank you so much. I think this was a great conversation about how to intentionally connect in the smallest ways with the kids that you love and care for. If you are looking for places to get started, head to the play personality video on our YouTube. Or like we said, go back and listen to our routines episode. Don't overthink it. If something makes you and your kiddo giggle and laugh, do it again. Like Jesse said, just keep doing it again and keep figuring out the ways that you can connect and keep building those bridges for the seasons where you're going to need them. Thank you guys so much for being here today and for a great conversation about rituals. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, the best way to support us going forward is to subscribe. We'd love to hear from you. Leave a review, drop us a comment, or email us to let us know what you hope to hear in future episodes. Thank you to Kyle Wright, who edits and engineers all of our audio, and Tad Jewett, the creator of our music, on behalf of everyone at ETC. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on the Empowered to Connect podcast. Until then, we're holding on to hope with you.